1 Then answered Sophar the Naamathite: 2 Ready to speak should be ready to listen; glibness will not make an innocent man of thee. 3 Must all keep silence till thou hast done; shall none make answer to thy raillery? 4 Still thou wilt have it that all thy dealings[1] are upright, that thy heart, as God sees it, is pure. 5 Would he but speak one word in thy ear, make thee his confidant! 6 Would he but reveal to thee the secrets of his wisdom, in its ordered variety! Then wouldst thou learn that the penalty he is exacting of thee is less, far less, than thy sins deserve. 7 What, wouldst thou search out the ways of God, have knowledge unconfined of his omnipotence? 8 High as heaven is that wisdom, and thy reach so small; deep as hell itself, and thy thought so shallow! 9 Far as earth it stretches, wide as ocean; 10 will he sweep them all away, or confine them all in a little space, there is no gainsaying him. 11 He knows the false hearts of men, sees wickedness there, and wouldst thou have him overlook it? 12 Poor fools, that will have a mind of their own, and think they were born free as the wild ass!

[1] ‘Thy dealings’; the Hebrew text gives ‘thy doctrine’, but this is not in point. Job has claimed to be innocent, not to be infallible. It seems possible that there is some corruption in the text; meanwhile, the Latin word used occasionally has the sense of ‘dealings’ in general; cf. ‘he had dealings with Joab, son of Sarvia’ in III Kg. 1.7, ‘the God we have to deal with’ in Heb. 4.13. So also, ‘what she has done’ in Esther 1.17.

[2] ‘Hidden away in safety’; literally, ‘dug in’. It can hardly be supposed that the Latin version intends an allusion to burial.